


"look both ways."

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [25]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Awkward Crush, Crushes, Detectives, F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mystery, Oblivious, Secret Crush, Teen Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21562645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: The Wells & Wong Detective Society is launching an investigation into George Mukherjee and Alexander Arcady, believing them to be in love. To mirror this development, the Junior Pinkertons are launching an investigation into Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, believing them to be in love.Modern AUWritten for the twenty-fifth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/George Mukherjee, Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong, Daisy Wells/Hazel Wong
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	"look both ways."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celestialskies (littlebirdrocks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlebirdrocks/gifts).



> This story is an amalgamation of headcanon from the amazing MMU discord, particularly from the person this is dedicated to. Furthermore, this oneshot will be one of a few from this oneshot series set in the same universe continuing the same storyline.

**BEANIE**

I think I have noticed something.

In the library, Kitty and I are watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, sat on the comfortable blue seats in the corner by the Carnegie 2018 display, while Lavinia sits on the ground at our feet and plays cards with some girls from another class in the Sixth Form.

Beside the creative writing display are two of my best friends, Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong. As most people outside of Deepdean & Weston don’t know who Daisy and Hazel are (except for the world of true crime), I’ll explain who they are.

Daisy is a genius but pretends that she is not, and she plays on the hockey team, her beautiful blonde hair bouncing around her head at all times, ever-so-English eyes sparkling. Although she pretends that she is not a genius to all of the students and teachers, she scores 100% in every assignment despite playing traunt from many of her lessons and never turning in a piece of homework. She is revered and admired by those younger than us, proffered gifts and chocolates, despite how outwardly she displays her punk persona. It could not look more like Daisy is a dealer of some sorts: she sports a blonde undercut that’s purple underneath (which shows through in a way that everybody thinks is beautiful) and wears high-heeled black boots, her blazer is littered with non-regulation badges, and patches covered in swear-words are sewn to her bag. 

Hazel is on the chess team and everybody knows that she is an incredible genius, though much more timid than her best friend in all the world (who is Daisy Wells, in case you were unaware). She is a genius heading for Oxbridge, glittering with qualifications, music gradings, volunteer work and out-of-school commitments.

The two of them have found their ‘person’ in each other and will doubtless be by each other’s sides for the rest of their lives. They’re whispering to each other over a deep pink casebook, used for one of their smaller mysteries that does not involve murder. They’re glancing over to the boys sat diagonally opposite to them, pointing at them and down again at their casebook.

Who sits diagonally opposite them? Next to the Student Favourites display is George Mukherjee and Alexander Arcady, huddling over George’s book of unsolved mysteries. For those two don’t know and don’t understand how significant those names are, allow me to fill you in.

George is the resident pretty-boy of Deepdean & Weston while still being an absolute genius and the head of the Academic Decathlon team for our school (which Daisy, Hazel, and Alexander are also on). It’s rumoured that he has 'slept with' several of the supposedly straight boys on the various sports teams. That doesn’t include Alexander (I’m privately surprised).

Alexander is the All-American star pitcher of the cricket team, rising in the leagues and famous for the strength of his throwing arm. Other rumours that bubble around him (but don’t seem to affect him) are the whispers that he’s stayed stereotypical of his social standing in school and has fallen hopelessly in love with (and had frisky drunken nights with) hot prom royalty. I do not want to add to the whispers but I (once again, privately) believe that the new love interest doesn’t sport a dress and tiara, but a tuxedo and a crown.

“Look both ways!” I say, jabbing Kitty in the arm. “Look here and look there.”

Looking up from her phone, Kitty peers out with curious blue eyes at the students I’m gesturing to. “What is it, Beans?” she asks.

“See there! Look how Hazel is looking at Daisy as she goes on one of her genius tirades.”

It’s true. Hazel’s gaze is reverent, adoring, and directed at Daisy, who is oblivious. As Alexander explains his take on the Black Dahlia, complete with sweeping gestures and halfway decent approximations of accents, George’s look is fond, a smile tugging up one side of his lips and his eyes bright in such an innocently adoring way.

“What do you think?” I ask, eager as I elbow her for her opinion, jostling her phone.

With a roll of her eyes, Kitty says, “What do you want me to say? Beans, isn’t it obvious? Daisy and Hazel are smitten with each other, we’ve known that for months, if not years!”

“I know that!” I grumble. I’ve known that for months. I may have realised much later than the others but I am not _that_ slow. “No, look at George and Alexander! George is _glowing_ at him.”

She grabs my shoulder rather violently. “You think?”

“I _know_.”

* * *

**HAZEL**

“Do you think that it’s a good idea to investigate George and Alexander?” I ask Daisy in politics, leaning over to whisper in her ear while Miss Lappet drones on about an essay the two of us already know how to do.

“Shush!” she says, slapping my hand. “It’s a perfect case to investigate and I am simply so _bored_. Nothing has happened since… oh, summer!”

“Oh, _summer_?” I reply with as much sarcasm and I can force into my voice. “That was about four weeks ago, Daisy! We should be able to go four weeks without mystery.”

She takes my hand and squeezes it, and I swear that sparks shoot up my arm at the contact, our palms pressing together. I am terrified that she’ll notice how much I’m sweating. However, she says nothing and I breathe a small sigh of belief. “We’ve never been normal, have we, Hazel? Our friendship is built on the fact that we both despite the everyday.”

Before I can respond to the unusually heartfelt statement, she jerks my arm and points with the other hand towards where George and Alexander sit beside us on the back row. They must sit in the back corner together because George finds the amount of sound less overwhelming when he is sat in the corner and can survey where the clamour is coming from, and Alexander must sit with somebody he knows.

“George,” Alexander whispers, his legs hammering up and down under the table, showing how worried he is about… something. “George!”

George, fixated on Miss Lappet, turns his head and snaps, “What is it, Alex?”

Alexander flinches.

“I’m sorry,” George says.

Although he is turned away, Alexander must pull some sort of face that displays his absolute worry. I know this because George gasps and says, “Oh, _Alex_! Is this alright?” The ‘this’ he is referring to is him taking Alexander’s hand, threading their fingers together and moving his thumb over his hand to calm him.

“Yes. I feel… not okay. I don’t feel awful anymore.”

Daisy elbows me to write it all down but I already have my dark pink notebook out, scribbling down everything that’s going on.

* * *

After RP (which I have with Alexander after politics), Alexander pulls me aside and says, “Hazel, I need to tell you about something.”

“You didn’t murder anyone, did you?” I ask, putting my textbook in my bag. When I look up, his eyes are twinkling at me and he’s on the verge of a chuckle. “Oh, so if you did murder someone, you’re happy about it.”

He bursts out laughing after that comment, leaning heavily on my desk and bowing his head to his chest. “ _Hazel_!” he says with a wheeze. “No! It’s something… not murder-serious, normal-teenager-serious.”

“Go on?” I ask, zipping up my bag and walking out of the classroom by his side. We both stayed to talk to our teacher about the possibility of being allowed to take our end-of-unit tests on another day because we’re bust with SWAT. I wasn’t going to ask but he seemed to want to take as long as possible, perhaps to avoid meeting George in the corridor.

Perhaps I’m imagining what I want to.

That is, until he tells me what’s wrong.

“You know those rumours about me?”

Thinking that someone has been irritating him about them again, I reply with a sympathetic tone, “Oh, those ridiculous ones about you having a drunken night with hot prom royalty? I can’t believe people still believe that!”

He awkwardly rubs the back of his neck and a blotchy blush rises onto his face. I realise what he’s going to say before he opens his mouth. “Holy shit! They’re _real_ ? Alex, you _did_ that? When? It’s a rumour that spawned over the summer, who on earth were you with over the su— _oh_.”

This sudden realisation hits me hard while Alexander awkwardly chuckles. “I said _nothing_ , Hazel. You could be completely imagining everything you’ve just said.”

“And I’m the Princess of Kowloon!” I say, quoting one of George’s favourite things to say to racist pricks. “You… you had a ‘frisky drunken night’ with…”

“You can say it.” He nods with pursed lips, eyes looking everywhere but me.

“With _George_ ? George _Mukherjee_ ? SWAT team ambassador, resident pretty-boy, the person who is rumoured to have shagged most of the football team? _Your best friend_?”

He winces, snapping his elastic band against his wrist. “I take that back, it hurts when you say it aloud.”

I pause. “Does he remember?”

Alexander pulls a face that is almost… pained. “No…” he draws out, wincing again as if it hurts to say. “Or at least he doesn’t want me to know that he remembers.”

The two of us know how George and alcohol operate together. We investigate at parties, you see. It wouldn’t do for anyone to get blackout drunk (and I don’t drink at all). When we aren’t investigating, George will drink enough that he stumbles slightly and is a little less uptight. He would never drink so much that he couldn’t remember what he did under the influence of it.

“You know what?” I say, drumming my fingers on the strap of my bag. “I think this: he remembers but doesn’t think you do, and you remember but don’t think that he does.”

Alexander pauses. “Hazel,” he says in a rather upright voice. “If you are right, I will _kick_ myself.”

“Not if I get a head start,” I tell him, and hightail it to the canteen. 

* * *

**DAISY**

George and I discuss crushes as if holding a diplomatic meeting. “The way you go about it is simple,” George says, hands steepled before his face, elbows resting on the table. “You assess whether or not she has the potential to like you, based on her sexuality, previous crushes, current relationship status, and the likelihood of her being read for a relationship. Then you remove yourself from the situation so you may sit back and assess her behaviour to deduce whether or not she likes you back.”

“Back?” I reply, indignant. “Who says I like her, Mukherjee?”

He gives me a practised ‘are you shitting me?’ look and I square up against him, not allowing him one inch of ground. “Daisy Wells,” he says, tapping the table in front of him with one, slender finger, “if I could shake you without being snapped at by Twitting, I would. You are in love and there is no denying that.”

“ _Love_ ?” I say, though my ears burn most uncharacteristically. Perhaps… _well._ You see, I am not supposed to love Hazel Wong. My family does not deal well with having homosexual children. My brother is a prime example and George knows that better than most: after all, my brother’s sexual relations with _George’s_ brother are what made the front page of several newspapers.

WELLS FAMILY DISGRACED. 

As if we weren’t already.

(As an aside, just you try and make eye contact with somebody after a three-day weekend in which pictures of your brother and his brother dressed less-the-modestly and in a less-than-innocent position have been emblazoned in every paper under the sun, including the Sun.)

However, I _do_ love Hazel Wong. Simply put, she makes me do everything I am not supposed to. I have fallen for her personality, her loud and raucous laugh, the way she spins in circles when she is happy, how her eyes are bright with the thrill of a lead in the middle of a tough investigation, and how intensely and passionately she falls into absolutely everything.

I have been putting myself in danger for Hazel Wong since I caught sight of her glaring hard at me on a hockey pitch when we were twelve, and she has been getting into trunks for me for only one hour and twenty-seven minutes less than that.

We have been crossing oceans, climbing drainpipes, climbing in trunks, hanging off roofs, hiding behind mummy cases, and stepping onto stages for each other for five years. We’ve coughed blood, witnessed stabbings, thrown up side by side, lost family, been almost torn apart, come out, fallen in love (with other people and perhaps each other), seen arsenic poisoning in action, and pretended to murder each other fifteen different times (crime scene re-enactments).

We’ve done everything but kiss.

I may like to change that.

“Alright. I concede that I like her but not that I love her. But…” I pause and lean forward, a teasing smile on my face. “I have a question for you about those ridiculous rumours that are not so ridiculous after all.”

You see, I’ve developed a theory. I believe that the rumours of George more or less bedding half of the football team are not entirely untrue. This is mostly based on how I’ve noticed the footballers react to George’s generally flirtatious personality while we’re detecting; he can flirt information out of the straightest of men when he wants to. They all flush and go red and act like they’re disgusted by it. I hold this up against something else often: the rumours that Alexander had a drunken rendezvous after prom last summer. Who says that said prom royalty cannot sport a tuxedo and a crown?

George’s momentary horror is replaced by a smirk that is directed at me as he looks over my shoulder.

Chilly hands thread into my hair and Hazel, standing on her toes, leans over me, her hair hanging down in front of her face and our noses nearly touching.

I feel as if I have been set alight.

“Hazel,” I say, more breathless than intended. “Hello.”

I can feel George’s eyes on me. They say ‘I told you so’.

Hazel sits down beside me, chattering about her politics lesson, but I can barely pay attention for studying her. It’s awful but true. Her eyes are simply so bright, her lips are stretched so wide by a smile, and they look so soft I could kiss them there and then.

Panting (he was clearly racing Hazel), Alexander runs in and punches Hazel’s arm. “Cheat!” he exclaims.

“Sore loser,” she retorts.

Sitting down beside George, Alexander’s entire body relaxes at once. “George.” He says the word like a prayer. 

I watch them lock eyes and I know that I am right. “Alex,” he says, carrying the syllables on a sigh of relief.


End file.
